Last time the bells rang a death was in '39 when he was six years old and he still remembered. He was in the wheat field behind the church where his father was building stooks. When the bells rang three and three again then eighty tolls his father said ``Thats Mrs Greene gave up the ghost. About time too.''
He was seventeen when the bells woke him up. He wasn't asleep. Just drunk. He came out of the pub one night and the bells were ringing out a sound that made the hairs raise all over him. Stopping to vomit on an ancient grave he made it to the tower where three men were ringing changes. He watched them pull the ropes in almost perfect rhythm. A different intoxication overcame him.
``Can I do that?'' he asked.
``If you want to,'' one answered.
It took him fast. He came to love each bell he rang. He'd walk fifty miles over a Sunday to ring the bells at a distant church. When he was on the dole he'd walk the country ringing bells and the church towers of the country were open to him, and there were ringers everywhere who put him up for the night and bought him beer and tandoori chicken.
His favorite bell was Parson Longspeak who called from a round flint tower on the lonely marshes ten miles from his home. One summer Wednesday he propped his bicycle by the churchyard gate and went to enter the church. The key was gone from under the loose stone. Black Death had emptied the village centuries ago and now only a handful of houses remained. A circuit vicar held services every few weeks, and perhaps four people attended.
A woman came to the door of one of the small houses. ``There's death-watch beetle in the tower,'' she said, ``the bells are dangerous. They can't be rung no more.''
More and more peals were closed to him. People in the cities objected to the sound. The lonely country churches were locked and abandoned. Alone and rotting and fearful of vandals, their doors no longer opened to him.
He became depressed. He'd never held a job for long, or a wife. At some point life no longer seemed worth the effort. He had always feared the bells as well as loved them. Tales of people pulled right up the tower and smashed to death. Tales of bells falling onto the ringers below.
One dark and drunken night he left the pub and started out across the marshes to the round flint tower. He would break in and ring Parson Longspeak until one or both of them fell to earth!
Ten miles is a long way when your blood alcohol is .32. Falling in two ditches chilled and refreshed him though, and he was just two miles from his destination when he passed out completely.
Deeply he slept among the sighing reeds while across the marsh Parson Longspeak waited.